“Great God! she’s on a bar,” cried Coolidge, “and the tide’s running out, fast.”

“Yes, and them damned rebs are safe enough from our fire,” said one of the men.

A few scattering shot fell about them.

“They’re going to make their mark on us, anyway,” put in another.

“And we can’t send ’em anything in return, blast ’em!” growled a third.

“That’s the worst of it,” broke out a fourth, “to be shot at like a rat in a hole.”

All said in a breath, and the balls by this time falling thick and fast,—­a fiery, awful rain of death.  The men were no cowards, and the captain was brave enough; but what could they do?  To stand up was but to make figure-heads at which the concealed enemy could fire with ghastly certainty; to fire in return was to waste their ammunition in the air.  The men flung themselves face foremost on the deck, silent and watchful.

Through it all Jim had been sitting crouched over his oar.  He, unarmed, could not have fought had the chance offered; breaking out, once and again, into the solemn-sounding chant which he had been singing when he came up in his boat the evening before:—­

  “O my soul arise in heaven, Lord, for to yearde when
  Jordan roll,
    Roll Jordan, roll Jordan, roll Jordan, roll,”—­

the words falling in with the sound of the water as it lapsed from them.

“Stop that infernal noise, will you?” cried one of the men, impatiently.  The noise stopped.

“Hush, Harry,—­don’t swear!” expostulated another, beside whom was lying a man mortally wounded.  “This is awful! ’tain’t like going in fair and square, on your chance.”

“That’s so,—­it’s enough to make a fellow pray,” was the answer.

Here Russell, putting up his hand, took hold of Jim’s brawny black one with a gesture gentle as a woman’s.  It hurt him to hear his faithful friend even spoken to harshly.  All this, while the hideous shower of death was dropping about them; the water was ebbing, ebbing,—­falling and running out fast to sea, leaving them higher and drier on the sands; the gray dawn was steadily brightening into day.

At this fearful pass a sublime scene was enacted.  “Sirs!” said a voice,—­it was Jim’s voice, and in it sounded something so earnest and strange, that the men involuntarily turned their heads to look at him.  Then this man stood up,—­a black man,—­a little while before a slave,—­the great muscles swollen and gnarled with unpaid toil, the marks of the lash and the branding-iron yet plain upon his person, the shadows of a lifetime of wrongs and sufferings looking out of his eyes.  “Sirs!” he said, simply, “somebody’s got to die to get us out of dis, and it may as well be me,”—­plunged overboard, put his toil-hardened shoulders to the boat; a struggle, a gasp, a mighty wrench,—­pushed it off clear; then fell, face foremost, pierced by a dozen bullets.  Free at last!